A Finish

On Wednesday, I finished up the foreground and cleaned up some areas that were a little "scrubby".  I'm really pretty happy with the painting. I'm often asked about finishing and when you know when you are done. Like everything in painting, it depends. You really have to find a way that works for you. Someone said that "whenever you think you need more you really need less." This is true for most of us; we tend to overwork at the end adding unnecessary detail. As I'm nearing the end I ask myself if whatever I'm about to do is really going to make a difference in the painting. Most often the answer is no. I stand back, my back to the painting, then turn around and see if anything "jumps out at me." I make those corrections and repeat. Some people view the image in a mirror. This is very effective as it will quickly point out problem areas.

I really enjoyed working on something this large and think I'm made some real discoveries. Besides, there's something exhilarating about squeezing a whole $30 tube of paint out at one time.

Finished Painting

Work in Progress II

Well, another day in. Thank you for coming back to the blog to see what's going on. I got a call from the client yesterday. They've reconsidered framing and since the painting is going into a niche they wanted to "gallery wrap" the painting. This means that they wanted the border, two inches on each side, painted. My personal thoughts and opinions aside, I agreed that I could do that since I've left plenty of border and it would just mean that I had to go back and remix and paint the edges. A few extra hours. Those that have worked with commercial commissions before won't find the request for changes unusual. It's just the nature of commissions. I continued on the grass line yesterday and painted the heads of the largest palms. Again, I will need to do some finishing in all areas before shipping. I will take time out today to do some more drawing on the foreground. That area has been a little vague in my mind and I want to make sure that I have a really good idea of what I'm doing (at least better than I have now!) before I begin this final area. Not to jinx things but I think I'm on schedule to finish by Wednesday of this week.

Palm Hammock 06/16/13

A Work in Progress

I started the color work yesterday and spent a good six hours working on the sky and the upper part of the painting. The painting plan is to simply work top to bottom. Where edges need to be worked wet-into-wet, I will try to work those at the same time. I'm having a difficult time getting good pictures because I don't have enough light to evenly light something so large and the working surface is slightly tilted toward the overhead bank of daylight bulbs that adds a glare to the photos. Please bear with me. Today I continued with the line of palms. As you look at the photos realize that this is a work in progress and will require at least two passes of color. The first pass (where I am now) is to establish the color palette and solidify the values. The second will be to work the edges and minor adjustments. With that said, below is the state of the commission as of today.

06-12-2013

Detail of left side

A Good Start

Today I finally felt like I was making some progress. The logistics of the stretchers, the canvas and the studio setup took much longer than I thought it would. I've always said "you're first trip to Home Depot is just that, your first trip!" Anyway, I think artists believe that the only time they're productive is when they're painting. Often I have rushed into paintings only to find myself doomed from the beginning because of lack of preparation. I was able to grid the painting surface and using my sketches and photos lightly charcoal the composition in. This stage is shown below:

I then wiped off the excess charcoal and began my wash drawing. This took most of the afternoon and you can see the results below:

With a little cleaning up I think I have a good start to the painting. I'm using a stepladder to reach the upper parts of the canvas and, because there's a lot of sky, this stage shouldn't take too long. I'm mixing paint on a large kidney-shaped palette and this too seems to be working OK. I suspect that I'll have to mix large quantities of paint on a large palette and transfer it to the smaller palette as I paint. I suspect the toughest painting will be at the bottom. The bottom is only about six inches off the floor. I'm building up the Ibuprophen in my bloodstream thinking that might help. Tomorrow is a big day as the color work begins in earnest.



After being told numerous times, Liam has to find out for himself if the paint is wet.

Assembling the Framework

I decided to build a 2x4 ft. framework and skin it with 1/4" panelling. I set up this morning and cut the lumber and assembled it in the studio. I made the framework a little oversize to use the margins for "color" reminders. I'll make a swatch of the basic general colors as they're mixed and have a reference if remixing is necessary. My wife, Sally, was a big help in assembly and helping with the heavy lifting onto the easels. As you can see from the photo, my skilled help arrived from day school in time to pose. Tomorrow morning I'll wrap the canvas on the frame, grid, and start the charcoal drawing.

Trip to Atlanta

I went down to Atlanta today to pick up the canvas. The roll was 120" wide by 6yds, Fredrix "Dixie-123". This is a fairly heavy cotton canvas with a medium toothed surface. It is pre-primed but I plan to add an additional layer of Utrecth professional gesso before using it. This is to make sure that I have the surface well sealed. I had already ordered the painting supplies and got word today they it would arrive Friday, 31.  Since the finished painting will be shipped un-stretched in a roll I'll have to construct a temporary stretcher. I thought I had a plan for mounting the canvas which was three sheets of 1/2" plywood joined on the backside. I'm worrying about the weight and how that's going to affect attaching the canvas. I'm now thinking about making stretcher bars, with supports, from 2x4's then attach 1/4" ply to the front. This should bring down the weight a great deal and make the stretcher much easier to handle. I will probably make a decision tomorrow.

How to Eat an Elephant?

As the old joke goes you eat them one bite at a time. This post is an overview to the preparation work for the painting. I've worked on complex, larger paintings in the past and have had some embarrassing failures made all the worse for being large!Almost all were due to lack of planning and preparation. Failure being an opportunity to learn something, I've learned to take time up front and do the work that will more often insure a good start and thus, a better ending.

The drawing preparation will be creating a proportional grid that I can use to scale-up a drawing to the intended size. Drawing the scene on an 16x20 is relatively easy because you can visually take-in the entire surface at one time. Seeing the relationships are simple. Not so with a with the large surface that I'll be painting. The beauty of the grid is that I don't have to work with an 8x11 ft. surface, I can work with a much more manageable 2sq. ft at a time. Below are three charcoals that I've done. The first is the entire drawing. The other two are separate drawings of single grids.



These simple drawings, and others, will help me get the initial image on the canvas accurately.

Details of Commission

On May 21, I received the go ahead to begin a large painting commission for a new hospital. The dimensions for the painting is 96.62  X 130.25 (are you smiling?). I've never done anything this large before and I thought it would be interesting to document the process with a blog page that will serve as a "diary" for the project.

The painting above is the color study that the project will be based on. It depicts a palm hammock located at Hickory Mound between St. Marks and Perry, Florida. The challenge of this painting will be how I take a very loose, brushy, impressionistic style of painting and render it on a large scale.